Among the Peredvizhniki (organisers of mo­bile exhibitions) (The Peredvizhniki is discussed in detail in article about I.N. Kramskoi) who devoted their talent to the ‘muse of wrath and sorrow’, a special place was occupied by Vasily Perov.

Orest Kiprensky, the great portraitist of the early nineteenth century, was born in the Ora-nienbaum district of Petersburg Gubernia, on an estate belonging to the landowner A. S. Diakonov. The future artist was entered in the register of Koporye church as the illegitimate son of the peasant girl Anna Gavrilova, who a year after the …

Alexander Benois was extremely versatile: he was a painter, a graphic, an art-critic, a lead­ing figure of the ‘World of Art’ society, a proli­fic writer on the work of Russian and foreign masters, and an outstanding scene-painter who worked in the theatres of Moscow, St. Peters­burg and in many cities in Europe and America. His …